For the past three decades,

Western multinationals have been outsourcing production to low-cost centers like China

creating global supply chains,

but business executives now appear to be moving away from the concept of globalization.

Today instead of celebrating "free trade".

US executives are calling for "fair trade."

This is a polite euphemism for better terms for US companies.

Business leaders are aligning themselves with President Donald Trump's "Make America great again" rhetoric.

We're gonna bring back “Made in the USA.”

But there's evidence a shift was already underway.

In 2012, a survey showed that

30% of executives said China was (the) most likely destination for US company investment

against 26 percent favoring local production.

But in 2015, only 20 percent of companies planned to boost production in China

as opposed to 31 percent that were looking to America.

One reason for this shift is a rise in relative wage cost in China.

Another is the production costs in the U.S. have fallen because of automation and cheap energy.

However, a third point is that chief executives have realized

that long supply chains create political and logistical risks.

Nobody should overstate the speed of this shift. It is subtle and slow.

For better or worse, we face a more localized world,

and that trend owes as much to robots and digital technologies as President Donald Trump.

We can turn it around.